Stories of family and ancestors who lived and worked in Cohoes (textile and garment workers, butchers and barbers), Waterford (canalers), Whitehall (farmers and canalers), Port Henry (iron miners and Civil War soldiers), Champlain (canalers and farmers) and other towns along the Champlain Canal in New York State with some diversions to the places they emigrated from....Quebec (landless farmers, shoemakers, sailors, soldiers), Acadia (more farmers), and even Cornwall, England (tin miners).

Friday, March 4, 2011

Modeling in the Grandilly Monument Yard

Across the street from the house the Wills family rented at 7 Saratoga Street, in Cohoes was a monument or stonecutter's yard where the Wills girls liked to take photos of one another. From a 1931 Troy City Directory that includes Cohoes, the identity of the monument company can be made...it was Grandilly Monument Works on the corner of Oneida and Van Rensselaer Streets. It provided an ideal backdrop for photo shoots.

The dates of these photos ranged from 1928 to 1934....among the pallets and stones, the girls posed for pictures.

Etta

Dottie

Betty and Dottie

Dottie, Jake Benoit and Anna

Julia Wills

Betty, Anna, Dottie

Dottie, Julia, Betty

Today there aren't too many buildings left in this area and it seems abandoned of all the activities that once made it a busy location..

Pages

“But soon we shall die and all memory of those five will have left the earth, and we ourselves shall be loved for a while and forgotten. But the love will have been enough; all those impulses of love return to the love that made them. Even memory is not necessary for love. There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning.”

Wilder, Thornton. The Bridge of San Luis Rey. 1927.

Reading this Blog....

...may not seem particularly easy. I post information and stories in whatever sequence comes to me and sometimes it doesn't make a whole lot of sense. I may post about someone and three weeks later write about them again. In between the two posts, there may be stories about other people or places. That is why there is a search button at the bottom of this page.

Thanks for reading and commenting! Email me at FrancoAmericanGravy@gmail.com